


Home

by AndyAO3



Series: Angry Marshmallows and Sad Robots [6]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Awkward First Times, Disabled Lone Wanderer, First Time, Humor, I feel like a lot of my fics get the E rating eventually, M/M, Sad Robots, Sorry Not Sorry, and some smut, general silliness, no one is happy, well now there's some happiness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-05-21 03:16:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6035812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't want to go back to Vault 101, but he has to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue: on the earth

**Author's Note:**

> Ted not happy. :I
> 
> I said I'd write this, so I am. Might as well get it started as something that's in the works. If I can work it in, there's probably going to be smut in this. Probably. Maybe. If the boys cooperate. Might take a while. I'm not sure what direction this fic is going to go in, but it's going to be A. very mellow, B. probably a lot shorter than Face On was, and C. very, very nerdy. There's going to be a ton of references here, folks. 
> 
> Honestly the only thing in it that isn't solidly planned is the ending. To bring in the railroad at the end of this fic, or after FO3's endgame? Decisions.
> 
> EDIT: THERE'S SMUT IN CHAPTER 6 YOU FILTHY SINNERS I KNOW YOU'RE JUST CLICKING IT BECAUSE IT HAS AN EXPLICIT RATING NOW

The big Vault door slid open. The warning buzzer blared, the lights flashed to warn people to stand back, but Ted did no such thing. He had a white-knuckled deathgrip on his plasma rifle, and the muscles in his jaw were tight. It was supposed to be his home, and yet he acted for all the world like he was walking into Hell itself.

Harkness saw this, and he couldn't help but worry.

That morning, Harkness hadn't even thought that Vault 101 would be one of their destinations. Up until the moment when Ted had told him that their plans had changed, he'd assumed that Ted was done with his old home for good. That was the impression the little human gave, along with the implication that Ted hadn't really liked living there all that much to begin with. And Harkness could understand that, seeing as he didn't exactly relish the thought of ever returning to the Commonwealth himself.

Not that it was out of the question. He'd do it if he had to, or if Ted wanted to. Which he supposed was the same sort of reasoning that brought his human back to Vault 101-- that Ted felt he _had_ to. Because there had been no joy in the false smile he'd given Harkness while telling him that there would be plenty of books there. None at all. It was the same kind of attitude Ted had adopted when dealing with his father, which made Harkness think that his human's homecoming wasn't going to be all that pleasant.

His suspicions were confirmed when they found the first body just inside the door. Riddled with bullet holes, a stealth boy loosely strapped around the right wrist. Ted sighed, knelt down, and closed the dead man's unseeing eyes. He didn't bother to loot anything. "Let's go," he said.

And Harkness followed, as he always did. As he always would. He'd learned what happened when he didn't follow. Seen that even though Ted could certainly take care of himself, Harkness being there kept him from being hurt as much as he might be otherwise. The plasma burns on the human's shoulder were still healing, a lingering reminder of the cost of Harkness not being there. Not an immense cost, but enough of one that they could easily pile up with enough time and enough slip-ups.

He knew, deep down, that he was probably worrying a bit too much. That his protectiveness could easily turn into coddling. But the alternative had too great a potential for loss; in his mind, any potential for loss was too much.

Shit. All the tension and quiet was making him anxious. Ted wasn't talking nearly as much as he normally did, which usually took up just enough of Harkness's processing capacity to keep him from sinking too deeply into his own thoughts. It wasn't Ted's fault in the slightest, but it was definitely offputting.

"Stop right there or I'll shoot!"

An unfamiliar voice cut through the static of his thoughts; he stopped himself a fraction of a second before he pulled the trigger on its owner, having drawn his magnum in the amount of time it would take a human to blink. Ted, too, had drawn his weapon. They were both a bit jumpy, weren't they?

"Well I'll be damned," the security guard said. He was tall - though not quite as tall as Harkness - and kitted out in full riot gear over his vault suit. His weapon was a standard, unmodded ten mil. "If it ain't the wayward son."

"Cut the shit, Gomez." Ted hadn't put away his plasma rifle, only lowering it. "Where's Amata? The hell's going on?"

Gomez eyed Harkness warily. "Why don'cha tell me who your friend is first?"

Harkness wasn't intimidated by the scrutiny, nor was he offended. He had enough experience with law enforcement to not be bothered; it was just the way things were. "Chief Harkness," he answered. "Head of security for Rivet City."

"Sounds fancy," the guard drawled, unimpressed. "Won't mean shit down here."

"That's what the guns are for," Ted noted. "Well, that and I figure that anyone who fucks with Harkness is signing their own death warrant."

Harkness smiled in the sort of way that Ted had once said was 'creepy'. "Not that I'm looking to kill anyone while I'm here," he said, "but I can't make any promises about not breaking any bones if provoked." If Ted was going to milk everything he could out of the fact that Harkness could be intimidating, then so could Harkness.

Gomez looked mortified (and maybe faintly ill), so it seemed to be working. "Look, kid," he started to say, "I got no beef with you or your dad. You folks've always done right by me and my family, and me? I'm okay with lookin' the other way and lettin' you two by so long as you ain't here to cause trouble. But the Overseer ain't gonna take too kindly to you bein' here, especially now."

"The Overseer can kiss my pasty white ass," Ted told him blandly. "Where. Is. Amata."

Somewhere between the plasma rifle, the small Vaultie out of fucks to give, and Harkness, Gomez sighed and seemed to decide that this wasn't something he was going to be able to get the upper hand. He stepped out of the doorway and gestured down the hall. "Residential, with the rest of her rebels," the guard said, his expression pinched up with something like pain. "And hey, listen... If you can do somethin' for Freddie, maybe--"

"I'll handle it," Ted assured; from the tone he used, Harkness had no doubt - whatever it was - that Ted had already planned to handle it from the start.

Gomez relaxed visibly, offering a weak smile. "Thanks, kid."

The pair headed down the hall, leaving Gomez to his post. The moment the guard was out of sight, Harkness reached out and took Ted's hand, winding their fingers together.

Ted stopped in his tracks and blinked up at him. "What is it, babe? You okay?"

"I'm fine," Harkness said, "but you're not."

It was a wild guess, but Ted's joyless smile and the way he squeezed the hand in his a little tighter told Harkness that it wasn't far off the mark at all.

 


	2. essentia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was meant to have a bit more plot to it but it got de-railed. Mostly it ended up being "Ted reunites with frand, Harkness is a dork". It's from Ted's perspective so at least that's fun. I spent a lot of time researching the medications but if I get _anything_ wrong, any detail at all, any part. **LET ME KNOW.** Pls. I'd rather correct myself than fuck up and continue fucking up.
> 
> Harkness you noodle. THE CLUES ARE IN THE WORD IF YOU BREAK IT DOWN.

After all the time spent outside, the vault felt too goddamn small for comfort.

In his head, Ted knew that it should've felt like home. He could navigate those halls blindfolded if he had to; living in a confined space for nineteen years had that kind of effect on a guy. But that didn't change how stale the air was, how cramped the corridors were. How unnatural it all felt after having known what it was like to be free of it.

He took in a deep breath to calm his nerves, and promptly sneezed.

"Allergies?" Harkness was obviously guessing, but he knew Ted well enough by then that the guesses weren't that far off anymore.

Wiping at his nose with his free hand, Ted nodded to confirm it and squeezed the hand that was tangled up with his other one in hopes of reassuring the big guy. "Yeah. S'dusty."

Harkness nodded once. He had that thinky frown on. "High particulate count, unusually high amount of carbon dioxide," he said. "It's worse than Vault 112 by a large margin."

"Not surprised," Ted replied, trying to keep his snuffling to a minimum and failing. He only ended up with more snot in his throat. Ew. "The Vault's best mechanic has chronic migraines. Gone untreated this long, he'd be falling behind on maintenance with a lot of the key systems. And that's if the Overseer's still inclined to give a shit."

"Untreated?" The android's frown deepened. "There's no doctor?"

"My dad was the head physician. When he left, the Overseer had his apprentice beaten to death." In Ted's opinion, Jonas had been the better doctor; he'd been the one to diagnose the BPD, as well as the one to pick up on Ted's nearsightedness. And that wasn't even getting into the various problems that he'd caught in other residents. "Apparently they were trying to get information out of him or somefuck, I dunno. All I know is that he was dead on the floor with his face smashed in when I got there."

Harkness wasn't one for cursing, but Ted could tell that such a thing went unspoken in the silence that followed. "I don't think I'm going to like this Overseer."

"I know." No reasonable authority figure like Hark would like a man like Alphonse Almodovar. "Just try to keep your cool, okay? I know it's gonna be hard, but I don't wanna get people killed--"

And then he was cut off by the distinct sound of bullets, and the idea of being careful went out the nearest window. Breaking away from Harkness, Ted shot off down the hall towards the atrium, pulling out his plasma rifle again along the way.

"Stay back!" an old man hollered, holding a ten mil in trembling hands. Ted recognized the guy, just as well as he recognized the kid the gun was pointed at.

Shit. Poor bastard looked like he was about to cry. Ted set his jaw and gripped the rifle a little tighter. "Put the gun down, Taylor," he said firmly.

The old man jumped; he was so twitchy that his finger hit the trigger again and sent another bullet ricocheting off the ceiling. Ted ducked reflexively. "You!" the old man gasped.

"Yeah, me." Unlike the old man, Ted didn't have his finger anywhere near the trigger. He knew better. "Now holster your goddamn weapon before you hurt somebody."

Taylor shook his head quickly, pointing with his gun at the kid he'd nearly shot. "He's got a knife!" The kid in question - Freddie Gomez of all people, with a switchblade in one hand and wearing a distinct Tunnel Snake jacket and haircut - stood his ground in spite of the pistol making him flinch.

"And you've got a fucking gun. Put it away."

"You don't understand," the old man insisted. "My poor wife, she--"

Hell. Ted really didn't have the patience for all this. "Tough shit. Don't take it out on people who aren't at fault." Turning away from the old man (who was well on his way to blubbering, which Ted honestly didn't feel like dealing with), he made a beeline for Freddie.

And for a guy who'd probably never seen real combat, Freddie was taking having been shot at pretty damn well. As in not crying. "Jesus, did you see that?" he sputtered, putting his knife away and smoothing out his jacket. "Sumbitch coulda killed me."

"Pff, nah, you're tougher than that." Ted grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. Of all the people, man. "You okay though?"

"Hah, yeah. Old man can't aim for shit." Freddie's voice cracked midway through the second sentence; he winced at the sound and lifted a hand to rub at his own throat, averting his eyes. "Anyway, uh. Good to see you, y'know? Guess Amata's message must've gotten through."

At that, it was Ted's turn to shy away. Great, now he got to be reminded of his mistakes. Wonderful. Just what he always wanted. "Yeah, how's she been?"

"Pretty good. This whole rebellion gig's been great for her, gotta say." Glancing about, Freddie leaned in close and hooked an arm around Ted's shoulders. "So, she missed you pretty hard while you were gone..."

Ted felt like he'd very much like to meld with the floor right then. "That's nice."

"What, that's all you're gonna say?" Freddie huffed and punched him in the shoulder lightly. "Jeez, man. That's cold."

"Hey, c'mon. I didn't think I was gonna come back, alright?" And he would've said more - really! - but then Harkness showed up and got that Thinky Frown again and Ted had to extricate himself. "Harkness! This's my old pal, Freddie Gomez. Say hi."

Freddie being the observant kinda guy he was, all it took was a once-over before he smiled brightly and held out his hand. "Heya! Any friend of the marshmallow is a friend'a mine."

Harkness blinked. And blinked again. Slow and unsure, he took Freddie's hand and shook it once; Freddie came away from it flexing his hand like it ached and mouthing a silent _ow_. "Marshmallow?" Harkness repeated.

"Yeah, it's a nickname. Don't think too hard on it." Ted tried a crooked grin to maybe reassure the big guy, but it didn't earn much more than a slight headtilt.

Harkness stared for a long moment at Freddie after that, his frown growing deeper by the second. For a moment, Ted had half-convinced himself that the sometimes-dense robot was going to make a comment that would warrant a smack upside the head. Freddie, too, seemed to feel a little of the tension; he straightened his posture and squared his shoulders, looking Harkness in the eye almost defiantly.

"Got somethin' to say, tough guy?" Freddie prodded none-too-subtly.

Harkness blinked again, like he hadn't realized he was staring. "Sorry," he said. "It's just-- Ted has a jacket like that."

Freddie gawked for a second before moving right on into preening. "Yeah?" His expression broke into a broad grin as he shoved his hands into the jacket's roomy pockets, rocking back onto his heels. "Shit, shoulda brought it with then, marshmallow. Butch'll think you hate him now or somethin'. You know how he is."

Oh. Well, fuck. That was so much better than it could've been. "Butchie can go suck on the Overseer's farts for all I care," Ted scoffed, trying not to show how relieved he was.

Shit, maybe this'd be easier than he thought.

\---

Somewhere during the course of their conversation, Ted got Freddie's meds jotted down on his pip-boy; testosterone cypionate, and fluoxetine. Both of them had strings of gibberish letters for chemical names, but he got those down too just in case there was any confusion. Simply put, he didn't trust his own memory enough to promise that he'd recall that kind of thing off the top of his head.

"We've also gone through the supplies of painkillers pretty quick," Freddie told him. "Shit like ibuprofen and naproxen, y'know? Butch and I broke into storage and got what we could, but there's been a shit-ton of headaches goin' around lately."

"Probably has to do with the mechanical failures," Ted mused. "My allergies are acting up, I know that much, and Hark mentioned that the air smells funny. And, well, if the fans aren't running, there's no circulation. No circulation means no filtration, no CO2 scrubbers, nothing."

"Right, I get'cha. All that bad air means headaches, right?"

"Yep." Well, Ted could think of a few other symptoms that could spring up because of poor air quality, but he didn't feel like bringing those up to Freddie. Guy had enough on his plate without worrying whether his irritability was caused by bad air or not. "Anything else you can think of?"

Freddie considered for a moment before shaking his head. "Nothin' else I'm good with, man, sorry. I'm only payin' attention to the whole medicine thing 'cause I'm invested, y'know? I mean, beyond that I'm just muscle."

Aw... Ted smiled and patted his friend on the shoulder. "C'mon, man. You're more than that."

"Easy for you to say. You're all brains and no brawn." Freddie snorted and shrugged off Ted's hand, shaking his head. "Ain't that why you've shacked up with the big guy over there?"

Ted sighed irritably as he felt the heat rush to his face. He could lie all he wanted, but nothing would change his body language. "Hark's more than just muscle, Freddie," he grumbled, casting a glance in the android's direction; Harkness had thankfully understood the need for private discussion after the introductions and was leaned against a wall on the other side of the atrium, with a couple of nearby security guards eyeing him warily. The fact that he was taller and broader than most was not lost on them.

"Yeah, no shit," Freddie remarked dryly. "He's got a nice ass and a pretty face too."

"What the-- Oh, for fuck's sake. I'm not _that_ shallow." A pause. "--alright, maybe a little shallow, but not like you think."

"You did say you didn't think you were gonna come back," Freddie noted.

"D'you seriously think I just let myself fall into the outstretched arms of the first pretty thing I saw? --don't give me that look, asshole."

"I wasn't sayin' nothin'."

"You were thinking it!"

"I may be thinkin' it but I ain't sayin' it--"

"Is there a problem?"

Both of them shut up immediately as they realized that Harkness was looming over them; Freddie gawked for a second, then grinned in a way that made Ted very, very nervous. "Heya! So like, marshmallow's been tellin' me all about you two."

" _Freddie!_ " Ted squawked.

"Shhhh, I'm helpin' you out, man." Freddie slung an arm around Ted's shoulders and beamed up at Harkness. "So! I gotta ask--"

"Freddie I am gonna fucking strangle you--"

"--what's your opinion on polyamory?"

Harkness thought on that for a very long while, going quiet; Ted just knew that his face had gone beet red by that point.

"I'm sorry," the android said slowly, "but I'm not sure I know what that means."

Freddie's subsequent gigglefit echoed through the whole atrium.


	3. words that we couldn't say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of those tracks where I just picked it based on the overall mood OH FUCK IT I'M PICKING A DIFFERENT ONE
> 
> *half an hour passes*
> 
> Alright THIS track works. Pfffff.

Harkness had the fleeting thought as he saw Ted bounding ahead, heard him shout down a scared old man, that Ted wasn't taking the time to read the situation. Some deeply ingrained notion in the android's mind told him that security had every right, every reason to be wary and upset if they couldn't keep the peace.

But then, that was a Courser's line of thought. That was what an oppressor would want people to think-- that violence against the populace was well-deserved if the populace so much as put one toe out of line, even if the lines were so badly drawn as to not give the populace room to even breathe. And even if he hadn't reminded himself of that thought, he would have seen over the course of the next few seconds that Ted had the right of it, that this situation was heavily weighted against the young man with the knife. Anyone who couldn't see that the fellow in the jacket was just as scared clearly needed their eyes examined.

Hell, Ted needed his eyes checked anyway and he still saw it. That about sealed the deal for Harkness. Being head of security himself for a time only made it that much more apparent just how bad these people were at their jobs. The very definition of the word was being twisted; security was meant to make people feel secure, not just ensure the security of a very select group of narrow-minded individuals who happen to agree with the status quo.

Oh well. At least Ted had made a friend. Or reunited with a friend. Something like that. Sighing, Harkness defaulted to keeping watch so that none of the security officers present tried to jump Ted and his friend while they were talking, checking with them every so often to make sure all was well and parting from them whenever he reasoned that privacy seemed to be in order.

(What with this Freddie being a friend of Ted's, Harkness was not surprised that the young man had a tendency to ask odd questions. He didn't even know what polyamory was, so how could he have any thoughts about it? Ted always befriended the weird ones.)

Afterwards, they continued down the hall through the residential area of the Vault, Ted taking Harkness's hand again the moment they were out of view.

"Thanks," Ted mumbled. Harkness felt how cold the human's hands were when the fingers wound up with his own gently squeezed.

"Not sure what you're thanking me for," Harkness said. "I haven't done much." He squeezed Ted's hand in turn, ever so gently. Always careful not to break him.

Ted huffed a soft laugh and smiled. "I was about ready to smack you if you'd said anything bad about Freddie," he admitted.

Oh. That. Harkness let out a quiet sigh, making sure to lower his voice when he spoke next. "Drivers don't match the hardware, right?" he said. "Not a problem I had, but other synths did."

The hand holding his tightened its grip substantially. "And how many runaways did problems like that produce?"

Harkness felt his cognitive processes skip a bit as he dug through his memory. He could produce an exact number, if Ted liked. He could even say how many had been assignments of his. But Ted... Ted didn't need to hear an Institute answer, reducing every one of those synths to a dispassionate set of statistics and data. That would be the sort of answer a machine would give.

No, that wasn't it. It would be the sort of answer a human would give, wouldn't it? A human would say how tragic it was so many synths had to be hunted or rewritten because they didn't match up quite right to the specs they were supposed to have. What a shame it was that synths weren't turning out to be exactly what the Institute wanted them to be. How disappointing that synths with those sorts of deviations needed to go in for reprogramming so often to continue functioning at an optimum level.

Only recently had they begun experimenting with workarounds that involved making the hardware fit the software, and only with the more fully organic models that could respond to hormone therapy and surgical reconstruction. Even then it was seen as a method of enforcing the limited binary they wanted their synths to be coded with, not a treatment option. The Institute preferred changing the software when they could; the hardware was more important to them, when it came to synths. And Ted didn't need to know that.

Of course, Ted had already guessed. "That many, huh?" he asked after a while.

Harkness nodded slowly. "That many."

\---

The residential section had quite a few people who wanted to talk to Ted long before he got to the rebels. Most were angry, bitter, hurtful. Harkness had a hard time not snapping back at them, his temper kept at bay by Ted's firm grip on his hand.

They blamed his human for so much, just as Harkness had seen runaways get blamed for things that fell apart in their wake at the Institute. They blamed Ted's father for even more, but without James Davies around to yell at, they defaulted to heaping the verbal abuse on Ted. Even people who were relatively friendly and apologetic - Stanley the mechanic, for instance - blamed Ted and the rebels that came after him for the Vault's problems. One particularly angry woman who smelled distinctly like hard liquor said that these rebels were a menace and a danger to polite society.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Mrs. DeLoria," Ted told her, and they moved on.

When they turned a corner and came to a makeshift barricade in the hall, Harkness realized immediately that something was amiss. The lights weren't right, for one thing; several were flickering, a few were outright dead. The air, he noticed, had been getting more stale the deeper they went into the vault, and more dust seemed to have gathered in these lower levels than in the more populous and well-patrolled ones.

To Harkness, it was appalling. A lack of decent order and reasonable security of the Vault's citizens meant that the Vault's own infrastructure was falling apart, and he couldn't see how such a thing would be acceptable to anyone who called themselves a leader--

He heard whoever was trying to sneak up on him long before he saw them. The sound of a boot with no tread scuffing against concrete floor, a flash of black and bright green and Vault suit blue out of the corner of his eye.

Just as an arm started to go around his neck, Harkness snatched at the attacker's wrist. He heard a yelp as he squeezed, the knife in their hand clattering to the ground.

"What the fuck!" his assailant squawked. "Fuckin' asshole, lemme go! Gonna break my fuckin' wrist--"

Ted whipped around to look at the sound, only needing a split second to take everything in. "Harkness, let him go!"

Harkness frowned. What, so Ted was taking the side of someone who had come at him with a knife? He put a bit more pressure on the bones of his attacker's wrist, not quite to the point where they'd give way and start to crack but close. The one who'd tried to knife him whimpered. "He attacked me," Harkness said simply.

"This the kinda gang you're runnin' with now, huh?" the assailant snapped. Ted's eyes narrowed; Harkness wrenched his wrist forward a little further, twisting the entire arm a bit in the process. "Owowow, okay, okay! Jesus fuckin' Christ, man!"

" _Harkness_ ," Ted admonished.

The android let out a sigh. "Fine." He let go, and the attacker stumbled back with a string of curses, rubbing feeling back into his wrist. That was the point that Harkness finally took a step back to get a good look at the guy.

Tall, but not quite as tall as he was. Heavily styled black hair, blue eyes, skin several shades darker than Harkness's own (and certainly darker than Ted's, but that didn't take much). A black leather jacket over the top of the standard blue vault suit. Harkness felt no pity at seeing how wet the young man's eyes were, nor was he intimidated by the heated glare in his direction. This kid had the look of a petty criminal, one who started shit for fun.

Kind of like Ted, although Ted had never pulled a knife on him.

"Your bodyguard's a goddamn sadist, y'know that?" the young man grumbled, pouting at Ted. "Jesus. I was only foolin' around..."

Ted wasn't impressed. "So your method of fooling around involves assaulting my boyfriend, does it, Butchie? Good to see some things don't change."

So this was 'Butchie'. Harkness made a note of that. Meanwhile, the young man's nose crinkled in confusion at the word. "Boyfriend?" he repeated. "I thought you were straight."

The muscles in Ted's jaw tightened; Harkness knew the signs of Ted's patience running thin when he saw them. Still, his human smiled. Even if it was an insincere too-sweet smile. "Aw, Butch. You telling me you didn't figure it out? C'mon, man, I was never any straighter than you."

Butch's eyes went wide as the blood drained from his face. He darted forward and grabbed Ted by the collar of his jumpsuit. " _Who told you?_ " he hissed.

"Dude, you're not subtle." Ted gave him a wry smirk. "Also, might wanna let go. Hark's looking a little pissed at you."

"I'm not pissed," Harkness protested. Ted raised an eyebrow.

Somewhere in the ensuing tense silence, Butch begrudgingly let Ted go.

\---

It wasn't until they met Amata that it hit Harkness just how significant Ted's words had been.

Amata was surprisingly tall. She had four inches on Ted, with a strong build and fairly broad shoulders. She, too, was darker than either Harkness or his human, and her eyes were a gentle, soft brown. Her long hair was pulled back into a practical ponytail. And her first act when they walked into the clinic, filled with sleeping bags and tired people, was to squeal "Teddy!" and rush forwards and try to gather Ted into a hug.

Ted put his hands on her shoulders and stopped her.

Immediately, the young woman's mood shifted. Her eyes flitted towards Harkness, then back to Ted; Ted offered her a sad smile, and she smiled back even though it clearly hurt her to do so. "You got my message," she said. "I wasn't sure you would."

"Came as soon as I could, beautiful," Ted told her. "Had to get my meds sorted out first."

She seemed relieved at that. "Oh, thank God. If the surface has ways to--"

"They do," he assured. "Gimme a list and I'll make sure all the prescriptions get filled. Just make sure you've got shit to barter with when it gets here, 'cause uh, it's probably not gonna be free."

"We'll think of something. Maybe my dad will be willing to open the vault up for something like that." She sounded hopeful.

Ted was much less so. "I doubt it," he said. "Amata, I think your dad's finally gone off the deep end."

She shook her head. "I know he's gone kinda crazy, but I'm sure there has to be some reasoning behind it somewhere. Even if it's not particularly good reasoning, there's still something. There has to be." She bit her lip. "I still think we can talk sense into him."

"If you thought you could talk sense into him, you wouldn't have called me."

"Okay, maybe shout sense into him." That sounded more like a Ted tactic. "Please, Teddy. I know what you're thinking, but we can't let this turn violent. We _can't_ , okay? This situation's enough of a powder keg as it is."

Ted sighed. His gaze shifted to the floor as he jammed his hands into his pockets, going quiet for a long moment. It was a while before he said anything else; when he did, the subject change made it clear that he'd probably conceded her point. "How've you been, Amata?"

Her smile was kind, so kind. So gentle. Harkness could see beyond a shadow of doubt that they cared about each other, that she cared about his human. "Good. Well, as good as I can be when I'm sort of forced to herd cats like this." She gestured to the room at large, the people gathered there. "Unhappy, hungry, tired cats." She turned back to Ted. "And you? I see you've made friends."

Awkward silence followed, and Harkness felt his anxiety creep back into the foreground of his thoughts as it persisted. Ted trusted her. He cared about her. But Harkness had no idea who she was, what her feelings were on robots, what she might think of synths. He knew Ted didn't tell people unless he had to, but it had happened before. What if Ted reasoned that it was the only way to get Amata to trust, to accept?

The decision was taken out of their hands when Butch barged in behind them. "Yeah, that's the marshmallow's new boyfriend," the young man drawled. "Got a stick up his ass if you ask me."

That was about the point where Harkness realized he very much wanted to hit Butch.

Amata blinked a bit. "Oh." She pursed her lips for a moment, looking between Ted and Harkness; Ted stiffened, frowning deeply to himself.

 _Boyfriend_. An odd word. One that had a lot more meaning to humans than Harkness thought it should. It was silly. He wasn't a boy; that would imply he was young, or young-looking, or immature. So, he was a man. But _manfriend_ was not a word. And most words that had the same connotations were antiquated at best, or just had other implications that Harkness couldn't really get past. _Lover_ implied love, after all, and that wasn't something Harkness was capable of.

The word Butch had used - and Ted before that - implied that they were together. And that? That was true enough. Even if  _together_ was an awkward word to try and shoehorn into common parlance. Ted was his, and he was Ted's, and that was as good a description as he could come up with. But while Ted had been unashamed to admit it before, he hesitated when it came to Amata. Which told Harkness that it wasn't shame that had Ted shutting up, or regret. It was fear-- fear in relation to her in particular, or what she could do.

Was that why he'd been so quiet before?

"Harkness?" Ted's voice was loud in contrast to the quiet room. "Could you give me a minute with Amata?"

What? Oh, privacy. Right. But Ted was visibly upset by this, by what Butch had said. Harkness didn't know whether it was right to leave him alone. "You're sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." The little human smiled up at him. "Wait outside, okay? I'll be out in a bit."

Harkness reluctantly left the room.

 


	4. my little flower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harkness no that's not a good line of thought for you to be following please stop before you hurt yourself. GDI. Ted, fix your robot.
> 
> When Harkness has no words, he defaults to smoochies. I WROTE THIS IN ITS ENTIRETY IN FIVE HOURS.

It took him a while, but at some point while he was outside the room and waiting for Ted to come back out or call him back in, Harkness realized that this Amata was probably the same woman Ted had mentioned before-- the one he'd intended to marry. And somehow, that one thought managed to open Harkness up to all the anxiety he'd been trying so hard to ignore up to that point.

Marriage was a human thing, with varying definitions that were rooted in even more human concepts like love and faith. Harkness sincerely doubted that Ted would pay any attention to notions of faith, but _love_? Love was something Ted displayed in abundance, flying in the face of all reason at times. It was a kind of insanity, a sort of undefined variable unique to humanity. Hate and fear at least made sense, but love did not. Could not. Inherently human things were like that. And Ted was the most human of all, with love being the only thing that could explain how he was able to forgive what Harkness would think unforgivable.

If he'd wanted to marry Amata, that meant he loved her. Knowing Ted, he wouldn't approach such a subject unless he was loved in turn. That was how he worked.

Harkness wasn't jealous of that. He was _scared_.

A synth couldn't love. The simulacra of feelings that all had logical beginnings and endings - all of which could be mapped, studied, proven - couldn't match up to something that had no logical endpoint and no basis in reason. Nothing he'd read, nothing he'd heard, nothing he'd been taught had ever given him reason to doubt that love was unknowable for a machine. There was no how or why to it, no way to measure it, and the definitions and parameters of it were contradictory at best.

Amata could give that to Ted, because she was human. She wasn't limited by programming or logic. And she was good, too, nothing like Ted's father. Nothing like Harkness. Her kindness and concern weren't simulated, they were as real as she was.

But Ted had chosen Harkness, a simulated person with code instead of thoughts.

Harkness couldn't love, or marry. He might be able to imitate what those things looked like, but that could never be fulfilling to a human. It would lack the substance of the real thing, and Ted deserved better. So much better. Ted was good and gentle and compassionate and understanding and-- and--

Fuck. His processes were getting so clogged by nervousness that they were stuttering. He-- he only wanted Ted to be happy and content, and yet his very presence at his human's side might disrupt that. But without Ted, he had _nothing_. He would be lost without that guidance, lost and afraid and alone. He couldn't stand living like that again.

It was a selfish thought, and he knew even as it went through his mind that it was only more proof of just how awful he was in comparison to Ted. How demanding, how ugly to want someone to stay with him when he was never going to be good enough for them. How damning it was that he was scared of losing what he'd never deserved to have to begin with. Everything would fall apart and Ted would get hurt, all because Harkness couldn't let go.

A half hour after Harkness had left him alone, the door opened once again and Ted stepped back out; Harkness sucked in a sharp breath, momentarily startled out of his thoughts by his human's sudden appearance.

Ted let out a long sigh, waiting for the door to close behind him before he looked up. His smile spoke of exhaustion, likely mental more than physical. It brought Harkness little comfort. "Hey," he said. "Sorry 'bout that."

"It's fine," Harkness assured. His voice was unusually rough. "What now?"

For a long moment, Ted studied him. Harkness wondered briefly if the small human could read him somehow. Eventually Ted shrugged and pulled a hand from one of his pockets to take one of the android's own. "Now, we go to my room. S'where I keep my best books."

Ah. Harkness smiled faintly at that. "I don't deserve you," he said honestly.

Ted snorted. "Other way around, babe. C'mon."

\---

Somehow, it seemed that Ted was determined to enable Harkness's selfishness.

The little human practically dragged him down the winding halls of the Vault, pulling him along until they reached a room near the back of the residential area. Well, two rooms; one was a sort of sitting area, and the other was a bedroom with two beds in it. Both had been ransacked, with cushions and blankets and belongings strewn everywhere. Ted cursed at the sight.

"Dictatorial bumblefucks tore up all my shit," he grumbled, picking a teddybear up that had nearly been dismembered and pouting; its stuffing was threatening to escape from its ripped seams. "Look at what they did to Buttons, the bastards."

"Fixing it can't be harder than stitching yourself together," Harkness noted.

"Well, yeah, but it's the principle of the thing." Ted pressed a kiss to the bear's oversized head and placed it gently on top of his dresser, giving it a pat. Then he took several seconds to straighten it out so that it wouldn't topple over. "It's okay, buddy. You'll be back in top shape in no time."

Digging through the clutter didn't take long. Under Ted's bed, there was a footlocker that someone had clearly tried to bust the lock on and failed; apparently there wasn't a second key for it beyond the one on Ted's keyring.

Within that footlocker, there was a treasure trove of books. And Harkness didn't know enough to know what genres or sorts of books they were, but the fact that there were paintings of crudely designed robots on the covers of some of them didn't escape him.

Ted pulled out several and handed them to him, one by one. Five by an Isaac Asimov, one by Ray Bradbury. Harkness hadn't read any of them before. He found himself gripping one of the ragged old paperbacks tightly as he stared at the clunky robot on the cover, with its awkward design and shining chrome surface.

"What about androids?" he heard himself say. Ted chuckled and sifted through the books in the android's hands, tapping the cover of one book in particular.

"That's Daneel," Ted told him. "You'll like him."

The artist's rendition of this Daneel was of a tall, even-featured man with tidy bronze hair, blue eyes, and a clean face. Standing next to him was a man in an old-fashioned trenchcoat with messy dark hair, heavily lined features, a poor complexion, and a visible layer of stubble. An android and a human, then. Harkness started to open up the book, but Ted slapped him lightly on the wrist.

"You're doing it wrong." The books were taken from him, shuffled around, and stacked in a particular way before they were handed back. "That one first. Otherwise it'll be confusing."

 _I, Robot_. Harkness frowned at the cover deeply, dissatisfied with the outdated robot it depicted.

Ted snickered at him. "What a pout. You're so cute, I swear."

"Do you even know the definition of that word?" Harkness found it hard to see himself as cute. He didn't think Ted was lying, he just thought Ted was a bit weird.

But that was okay, because his weird human still saw fit to be affectionate with him; Ted stood up on tiptoe to kiss the corner of his mouth and smiled in a fond sort of way that made his chest tighten. "I gotta go talk to the Overseer," the little human said. "Will you be okay on your own for a bit? Like, is it alright if I leave you alone in here? I can save it for tomorrow if you wanna cuddle or something."

Oh. So Ted had figured out something was wrong, even if he didn't know what that something was. Harkness made himself smile, shifting his grip on the pile of paperbacks to one hand so that his other one would be free to cup his human's cheek. "I'll be fine," he said. "Don't let your guard down, all right?"

Ted hummed and turned his head just enough to kiss the palm of Harkness's hand. His fingers were cold as they encircled the android's wrist, too small to surround it completely. "You worry too much, y'know that?"

Maybe. Or maybe it wasn't enough. Harkness didn't know. Instead, he decided to be honest. "You're worth worrying about," he replied.

It was hard to see how surprised Ted was to hear that.

\---

[ _"... To you, a robot is a robot. Gears and metal; electricity and positrons.--Mind and iron! Human-made! If necessary, human-destroyed! But you haven't worked with them, so you don't know them. They're a cleaner better breed than we are."_ ]

Sitting on top of the rumpled sheets of his human's bed, Harkness read the first book he was given. And he was entranced.

It was a collection of stories, with the framing device of each story being told by an old woman who was being interviewed. The woman was a "robopsychologist", something that Harkness thought the Institute would do well to have. Her career had been spent alongside robots, working with them. Diagnosing problems that arose so that they could be ironed out in later models, balancing what public opinion dictated the company must do and what she felt was the right thing to do. The last part wasn't made clear at the start, but it became apparent the more Harkness read.

She reminded him of Ted, and the thought made him smile.

The first story was about a robot named Robbie who took care of a little girl. A simple, clunky model that couldn't speak, but the little girl didn't care about that. When the girl's parents got rid of the robot for fear of what it might make the neighbors think, she fell into a deep despair; she lost weight, she didn't socialize, and was generally miserable.

Her mother tried everything she could think of to get the girl to be happy, but nothing worked. The girl's father, who hadn't particularly agreed with the idea of getting rid of the robot in the first place, was dragged along in this mad quest to make the girl happy as well. In the end, no one was happy with any of it. So the father arranged to have the girl meet her robot in the factory it'd been assigned to, under the guise of detatching her from the notion of robots being friends.

The girl got into trouble; the robot saw this and saved her with the sort of reflexes that only a machine could have. And the girl's mother stopped trying to argue that the robot was a bad idea, while her father feigned innocence about the whole thing.

It was a simple story, yet it was ridiculously effective. Bradbury's work had been incredibly human, but this-- this author understood what he wanted his message to be and made it plain without having to ever say it directly. Most impressively of all, he understood his subject well enough to give it life and meaning. The machine mind wasn't something to be feared, nor was it something described in lofty terms.

For the first time since he'd started reading Ted's books, he felt like he was truly understood by an author. And he realized as he thought back to the time they'd spent in the library, that these books had likely been what Ted had been looking for all along. What Ted had wanted to give him from the start.

He kept reading.

The next story was about miners on Mercury, whose robots' Three Laws were getting in the way of their actual survival. The one after that was about a robot who reasoned that because he had only ever known life on a space station, the space station was all that existed in the universe. After that, there was a story about robots with a programming glitch that only manifested when a half-dozen of them were networked together. Then one about a robot who lied to make the humans around it feel better, and promptly logic-bombed itself when faced with how the lies made the humans feel once discovered.

All of the stories were short and simple. Each and every one rang true with him on some level, especially when the humans acted exactly as he'd seen humans do in the past and the robots were just doing whatever they'd been asked or forced or otherwise should've been expected to do. Each time it could plainly be traced back to human error, not error on the part of the robots.

When Ted eventually came back to the room, Harkness was surprised to realize just how much time had passed since he'd started reading. He wasn't technically capable of losing track, but he'd been so absorbed that he'd stopped paying attention to the passing milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours.

"Sorry it took so long," his human said, setting the plasma rifle down on the floor in such a way that it was propped up against the wall. "Almodovar's being stubborn. I'll probably give it another go tomorrow, but... Ehhh, whatever." He shrugged it off. "Good book?"

Harkness couldn't help his smile; that was the point where he felt that the only reasonable response to that question was to fold the page he was on to mark his spot, put the book down, get up, and walk right on over to gather Ted up in a hug, kissing the top of his human's head.

Ted snickered at him. "I'll take that as a yes."

 


	5. first love final love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title's track does not exist on Youtube anymore. I'm perfectly okay with that, because frankly the anime it comes from is one of the most embarrassing things I'll ever admit to having watched (IT WAS FOR THE MUSIC, OKAY. THE MUSIC). 
> 
> I was tempted to chop this down but then I looked at my other fics and, well. It's still shorter than the longest chapter of Face On. So there's that, I guess? Dear god there's a lot of feels in this. Ted doesn't _quite_ have a breakdown but him even coming close was gonna happen sometime (and he might still have a proper one later-- he clearly hasn't talked out everything that's in his weird little head yet). There is also cute though. And then more feels. Weirdly, the part that took the longest was the middle one. I actually had to research and ask around, even poked my followers for input. My followers are great. So here, have a chapter. Maybe now after all this I can finally get them to smut. Maybe? Maybe.
> 
> Guh.

"Amata knows me," Ted explained as he yanked off his boots, kicking them aside. His pip-boy was the next thing to go, set down on the dresser next to the teddybear. "She's seen me at my worst. Worse than you've seen me, like... Shit. It got pretty bad when I was younger."

"Your malfunctions?" Harkness guessed. He'd settled on the bed next to where Ted was sitting, watching impassively as his human stripped away layers for the sake of settling in. His book was on the pillow, and the rest of them were stacked neatly on the floor. Sometimes Ted's knee would bump into his thigh, and he would shift a little to compensate, which would lead Ted to scoot closer.

His human was odd like that. "Heh. 'Malfunctions', huh? I like that." Socks were the next thing to go, landing somewhere near the boots. "But yeah. You haven't seen me get really bad. I've screamed at her before. Didn't hit her, but I'd punch walls and kick tables and shit. Busted my hands, broke toes. Hell, I went through so many goddamn stims."

Harkness could imagine it. He hated that he could; it was a part of Ted's life that he couldn't touch, couldn't do anything about. He had no way of helping his human's past self, and it hurt to think that Ted's inner demons could be allowed to get that bad by anyone close to him. Because Harkness could see that it was all preventable, all a result of pain that had built up over time. He knew because he had been able to catch Ted on the edge of those downward spirals himself, and if an ill-equipped android could prevent it, then the humans in Ted's life should have been able to do so as well.

But no. They didn't. They'd let it get worse. "Anyway. She's seen that, so she knows me pretty damn well." The jumpsuit was unzipped next, and Harkness noticed that it had once again been used as an oversized makeshift pocket. For snack cakes this time, although they'd gotten a little smushed from the earlier hug. "That being the case, she knows how much I tend to pick up on other people around me, y'know? So that's why I made you wait outside. I didn't want her to think you were taking advantage of me being fucked up, and I didn't want her to think I was saying shit just because it'd be what you wanted to hear me say."

"You care about her," Harkness observed. "What she thinks."

Ted gave him a funny look. "Well, yeah? She was my best friend way before we ever started dating." The human tore open the packaging and pulled out a snack cake to shove half of it in his mouth.

Of course. Caring about people was what Ted did. But Harkness had meant something a little more than that. Something that was hard to say, hard to think about.

Several seconds of silence gave way to Ted's voice when the human inevitably caught on; his sigh sounded a bit odd through a mouthful of snack cake. "Alright, babe," he said, swallowing hastily, "what's goin' on in that head of yours? You've got that thinky-face."

"--You should go back to her." There. That was factual. Honest.

"Pfuh, you're kidding, right?" A pause, no more than a few heartbeats long. "Holy shit, you're serious."

Harkness found that he couldn't look Ted in the eye, staring instead at his own feet. "If she's seen you at your worst and she doesn't care, isn't that something worth holding onto?" He didn't want to say his actual reasons. Ted would accept them, because that was how such things always went, and Harkness didn't want to be accepted.

"She's seen me at my worst and she enables my shitty behavior," Ted corrected him. "I can be an abusive fuck when I get bad, to myself and everyone around me-- seriously, Hark, I know these things because I've been there. I know I'm no good for her. It's not her fault, and it's not mine, she's just too damn sweet and I'm too much of an asshole."

Abusive? That was the first thing Ted had said that Harkness couldn't quite imagine. "But you love her."

"Love doesn't mean shit if you don't match up with somebody." Sighing, Ted set his snack cakes aside and dusted off his hands on the legs of his jumpsuit. "C'mon, why this line of thought all of a sudden? My crazy says it's because you're tired of my shenanigans, but I'd really rather not be right about that."

"I'm not tired of you."

"Alright, good. I believe you. My crazy doesn't, but let's pretend for a second that it's got no bearing on my decision-making." He took one of the android's hands, squeezing. Harkness couldn't pretend it wasn't comforting. "What's wrong?"

Harkness knew that from a technical standpoint, he was operating at near-peak efficiency in spite of how sluggish his processes had become. His throat wasn't actually closing up, and his mouth wasn't really that dry. But it didn't feel that way. "You-- you deserve better."

"Ooo-kay...?" Ted was puzzled. "Better than, like... Better than _what_ , exactly? You?" When Harkness only nodded in response, Ted frowned. "Huh. Can't say I agree with that one. There a reason for that?"

"I'm not-- not enough. I'm not human." It was getting harder to talk; his voice was wavering. He pressed on anyway. "Humans can be undefined. They aren't limited by programming, they can have a dozen different meanings for one word while still having that word be a universally understood concept. They can exist as contradictions. I can't. I can only ever be what I am. Anything else is a lie, and you don't-- you don't deserve a liar."

Ted clicked his tongue, looking thoughtful. "So basically, you're saying that you're inherently inferior to a human."

"Sometimes. When it comes to love? Yes."

"But you clearly feel things. I mean, I don't see you being incapable. You're definitely not a sociopath." Ted hesitated. "And if you were, you'd still be legit. Kindness doesn't have to come from empathy."

Harkness huffed a quiet laugh. "Love contradicts itself. Even my human memories suggest as much. And there's enough wildly varying definitions that I'm not even sure it's a good thing. The context it's used in never makes it any clearer. But humans are nebulous and confusing anyway, so it's fitting that they'd need and feel things that were similarly nebulous and confusing. And if it's something you need--"

"Hold up." The little human twisted in such a way as to bring his free hand up and put two fingers to Harkness's lips, shushing him. "I think I've found the problem. 'Nebulous and confusing'?"

Mutely, Harkness responded with a hesitant nod.

"Alright, then. If your human side is knocking around up there as a seperate entity like some kinda psychosis, then please tell him he's a dumb prick who doesn't know shit. Love absolutely has a definition, and the fact that you're confused just goes to show how obtuse most humans can be."

Did it? Harkness blinked down at his human in quiet confusion.

"Love, as a concept," Ted began, "is based entirely in subjectively finding something or someone to be _really fucking neat_ for whatever reasons a person might come up with. It has literally no bearing on how well or how poorly a relationship can work, and frequently isn't mutual. As is the case with me and two-hundred-year-old ice cream I found in cold storage."

It took a while for Harkness to find something to say. Was-- was that true? It made sense, especially in relation to how Ted seemed to look at the world - and how Harkness looked at things, himself - but it almost seemed too simple. "Why were you eating pre-war ice cream?"

Ted's fingers fell away so he could make a dismissive gesture while not letting go of the android's hand. The closeness had become so natural that Harkness had almost forgotten it was there. "I was dumb, okay? Besides, it was good if you ignored the whole food poisoning thing."

At that, Harkness felt himself smile. Ted was rambling, but it a good sort of rambling, not nervous in the slightest. His human had confidence in abundance, animated and chatty about anything at all when he was allowed to be. It was a welcome change from having to think of how to keep a conversation going himself. It was also good to see animated rambling over nervous babbling.

It was even a little bit... Cute? "Anyway, point being, it's really weird how shy people have gotten about saying they love things or other people or whatever, and that might be part of your problem," Ted continued. "People get these ideas that love needs to be complicated when it isn't actually complicated at all, it just gets tangled up in a lot of other ideas and concepts that are way unhealthy because nobody fucking knows how to deal. Which means all you see is the gnarled unhappy mess surrounding it."

"So the contradictions aren't part of the equation," Harkness said.

"Nope! Not a bit." The human grinned broadly. "Honestly, I think you're in a better position than most. Humans like their contradictions because they don't like looking at themselves much. You, though-- you can be a little more thoughtful about it. You're all facts. There's no logical fallacies you can get trapped in except the ones humans shove you into, and if they do that then you can safely say they're not worth your time."

Right. A _cleaner better breed_ \-- that was what Ted thought of him. "Or that I'm not worth someone else's time."

Ted shook his head emphatically. "Nuh-uh, don't gimme that. You are one-hundred percent worth the time and I will aggressively cuddle you until you think so, damn it."

"Why do you get to say it when I don't?"

"Because I'm literally crazy, babe. As in 'throwing a lamp at the wall near where my girlfriend's standing and screaming at her to get the fuck out because my brain has decided to think that she's conspiring with my dad and the Overseer to lock me up for my own good' crazy. I have done terrible shit and no one deserves to live with the possibility of me doing it again." After admitting to all that, Ted's expression softened into something gentler. Sad, maybe, and tired as well. But kind too. "At least with you I get to think I'm with someone who wouldn't put up with that kinda thing."

He wasn't wrong. Harkness wouldn't put up with it. In fact, Harkness wouldn't let it get that bad in the first place. It wouldn't happen. "I would never lock you up for your own good," he said.

"I know. Well, I kinda know. Most of the things my brain makes up about you fall sorta flat. Ends up all going inward instead, about how I'm clearly manipulating you or taking advantage or somefuck."

"You're not," Harkness told his human. Then he hesitated before continuing with "I... I subjectively find you to be-- to be really. Fucking neat."

Ted stared. Stared for a long time, by human standards. By machine standards, it felt like an eternity. Suddenly, he let out a snorting laugh and clapped his free hand over his mouth, muffling the ensuing gigglefit.

Was that a standard response?

"Dear fucking _Christ_ you're adorable," he said, muffled by his hand; when that hand came away, it revealed a wide grin. "You dumbass. What the fuck kind of confession is that? No, no, don't answer that, it was rhetorical."

He flopped back against the bed with a happy sigh, and he was just short enough that his head didn't hit the wall even though his hair brushed against it slightly. Harkness had to twist himself somewhat to let their hands stay together, particularly when Ted tugged him even farther just for the sake of kissing his knuckles.

"You must be really blinded by my overabundance of charisma or something," Ted remarked.

Harkness smiled. "Right."

\---

Things were easier after that. Harkness resumed his reading (something else he'd concluded was "really fucking neat", which he supposed must mean that he loved reading good books), and Ted got up again and left the room to get something to drink and a bit more food. He came back with something he called sweetrolls, which he explained were "basically yeast rolls", and offered Harkness one. After trying it, Harkness decided that the food at Rivet City had been ridiculously inadequate after all; he said so to Ted, and Ted snickered and thumped him on the shoulder with a paperback.

Were sweetrolls nother thing to add to the growing list of things that he could say he loved? Like cuddling, and Ted, and books? Possibly. Ted's implication had been that he shouldn't be shy about it. He'd have to ask at some point what Ted's list was like so he could have something to compare himself to.

The beds in the Vault were bigger, wider, longer. Meant for the pre-war average of what general size and shape humans tended to be, which was closer to Harkness (or Amata) than Ted. It was much easier to stretch out, to lay comfortably. He could turn the pages in his book without disturbing Ted with an accidental elbow to the face.

Not that any of that stopped Ted from cuddling up nice and close with a book of his own ( _The Ship Who Sang_ , according to the title), but that was fine. Harkness didn't mind.

It was odd that Ted went through his dresser before he started reading and came out of it with a pair of square-framed glasses, though. Very odd. Moreso when he put them on.

"Your eyes look smaller with those," Harkness commented.

Ted snorted. "That's how the magnification works." After a while the glasses were taken off and Ted made an aggravated sound, putting the book down and rubbing at his eyes. "Shit. Prescription's off. Just gives me a headache now."

Well that was confusing. "Wouldn't it give you more of a headache without them?"

"Without them I know how much I'm compensating for. With them, my eyes don't adjust right. Not used to it anymore, and my peripherals are garbage." The human looked thoughtful for a moment, before handing the glasses over to Harkness. "Pfft, here. You can adjust the focus on your eyes, right?

"Yes...?" Harkness took the glasses with one hand while holding his book with the other, peering at them as he absently marked his spot in the book with his thumb.

"See how much you have to fuck with your settings when you put those on, then you'll know how bad it is for me."

Curious, Harkness put the glasses on. It was a bit of a chore, since Ted had a smaller head and more lopsided ears; the first thing Harkness noticed was how the frame dug into the back of one of his ears slightly once he got them situated, and the second thing was that the bridge of his nose wasn't quite broad or crooked or repeatedly broken enough to accomodate the nose-pads, so the glasses kept sliding down his nose.

The third thing he noticed was that he was looking at the room through one hell of a blur filter.

All Harkness could do was boggle at it as he adjusted his settings accordingly, bringing his vision to a level of focus that the glasses could make up for. As such he was able to precisely determine the magnification used, and it was daunting to him. "How do you _function_?"

"Squinting. Abusing the shit out of VATS. Educated guesses." Harkness glanced down and saw that Ted was beaming at him. "You look so sophisticated with those on."

"I don't care, they're painful." The moment Harkness had his necessary data, he took the glasses off and shoved them back into his amused human's hands. He had to take a few seconds afterward just to re-adjust himself to his normal settings, but he'd committed the _Ted_ settings to memory. "And your vision is-- worse? Than that?"

"Pfuh, hell if I know. It can go up or down. All I know is that it's off enough to not be good. Probably hasn't gotten better though, I'll say that."

Harkness frowned, feeling rather disquieted. He glanced down at Ted's smile, caught his human's gaze, held it. He estimated about twenty-two inches between them, with him sitting up and Ted laying comfortably. For a moment, he switched the settings over-- back to the imitation of how bad Ted's vision had been when he'd gotten that particular set of glasses. How close did Ted have to be to see clearly?

The small human snickered as Harkness leaned in close. "Uh, hi there."

He was eleven-point-three inches away when he finally came fully into focus and the blur went away. That was just over four inches more than the difference in their respective heights. "You can barely see anything," Harkness said, shocked and just a bit amazed.

"And now you know why I like grenades." Ted grinned, pushing himself up onto his elbows to steal a kiss that tasted like stale sweets and Nuka Cola. "Can't imagine what it'd be like to see shit perfectly though. I bet you don't even get eye floaties, you lucky bastard."

"Eye floaties?"

"Human thing. Microscopic bacteria caught in the surface of the eye end up dying there and casting a shadow across a portion of your vision. Because it's on your eye, if you try to focus on the shadow, it shifts. Really annoying."

"No, I... I don't get those." Humans really were fascinating, weren't they? "My visual acuity is based on how high the image resolution is."

"Oh? What's your image resolution then?"

"Two seperate three-thousand, eight-hundred-forty by two-thousand, one-hundred sixty pixel images, analyzed and combined in real-time to add depth perception."

"Fucking _hell_ , Harkness."

\---

Ted stopped reading halfway through his first book, but Harkness didn't notice until he'd finished his own. It was that engrossing. To think that the implication was that robots were trustworthy enough to have high positions in government, even when they were so feared as to have to hide what they were to get there! Harkness was hardly a leader himself, but he appreciated the sentiment all the same. Since these were books Ted had suggested, it felt like the things in them were things that Ted must think about him.

A better cleaner breed. He didn't think so. Maybe if he could somehow make up for what he'd done, but not yet. He had so far to go still before he'd be the kind of person Ted thought he had the potential to be, if he could ever get to that point at all. Still, it was nice to know that there was at least one person in the world who wasn't afraid of him, who didn't hate him on some level. Who thought he was capable of things like love, even if he didn't think so himself.

One thing was certain, at least: the Institute would never keep books like these where synths could get to them. They probably wouldn't even allow them on the premises.

Hell, he could see them sending the Gen 1 and Gen 2 synths out in droves just for the sake of burning whatever copies they might find scattered around the Commonwealth. Couldn't have the smarter models getting ideas about how capable and inherently capable of _good_ they were, oh no. Then they'd get brave, and all the humans in those stark white halls would have to face their prejudice head on. The only slaves they'd have left would be the loyalists, the sadists, and the old models that were barely smarter than mannequins.

Things would change then. Not without a fight, but they'd change.

He looked down, fully intending to ask Ted about his thoughts, but the human wasn't reading as Harkness had assumed; Ted's book lay flat on his chest, open and forgotten. His hands were tucked behind his head, and his expression was almost a dazed one as he stared blankly at nothing.

Oh. That probably wasn't a good thing, was it? "Ted?"

"Hm?" The human's eyes came back into focus, flicking back in the general direction of Harkness. "S'up?"

"Is there a problem?" Realizing he probably needed a qualifier for that, he added to it. "You've stopped reading."

Ted sighed and resumed staring at the ceiling. That wasn't a good sign. "It's nothing. Just thinking, that's all."

"About what?"

"Nothing you need to worry about."

That was hardly reassuring. "Is something wrong?"

For a while, Ted said nothing. Harkness dutifully set his finished book down and set his hands in his lap, waiting. It took almost a minute. "Just-- just thinking. None of this would've happened if it weren't for me, y'know? Even the purifier thing. People died there, just like they've died here. They're not ever coming back."

"Why is it your fault?" If he understood Ted's reasoning, maybe he could talk his little human out of it.

"Before, uh... Before I asked you to come with me. I went to the purifier, right? You saw the audio I took from my dad's holotapes on my computer."

"Right."

"He said--" Ted's voice cracked mid-word, and he cleared his throat as if it might help. "He, he said that he never wanted to see any other parents go through what he had to go through. With me. He was so fucking relieved that he'd left me behind, because he thought I'd die the second I left the Vault."

"But you didn't," Harkness pointed out. "He was wrong."

"No, no. That's-- that's not the point, Harkness. Not at all. See," and there, Ted decided to pick up his own book and set it down on the increasingly cluttered dresser so he could sit up properly, "he left the Vault because of me. Hell, he came here because of me. Do you think there's any place left in DC that would be able to take care of me that isn't affiliated with some faction or another?"

"That isn't your fault."

"I could've stopped this. The Vault could've gone on without me. Would've been better off, to be honest. It's not like someone like me fits neatly into a pure-blooded Vault pedigree."

No. That wasn't right at all. What was he thinking? "Ted--"

"And I know how this sounds," he said, cutting off the protest before it could happen. "Before you go getting horrified on me. I'm... I won't break my promise. Just, you asked, okay?" No more than a second passed before he was talking again. "No, wait. That puts this on you. That's wrong. I'm sorry, just... Ignore me, alright? I'm rambling."

Harkness had no idea what to do as Ted curled up on the bed next to him, Ted's sigh muffled by the fact that his face became buried in his knees. What had brought this on? How had Harkness not noticed it before? Had it been building for so long that it was something Harkness hadn't known Ted to ever be without? Back then - when Ted had asked him to come along for the first time - was this why his human had looked like he was about to cry? Why he'd been so scared and desperate?

Gently, so very gently so as to not startle or upset him, Harkness reached out and pulled Ted close, closer, yet closer until the human had been eased into his lap and those steel-colored eyes were blinking up at him in disbelief. "Harkness, what--"

"I'm sorry," Harkness said, leaning in and kissing his small human's forehead. "I should've known something was bothering you."

Ted stared at him, mouth hanging slightly open. Eventually he let out a weak chuckle. "Why the hell is it your job to know what I'm thinking? I'm the manipulative one, here."

"Not what you're thinking. Just what's bothering you. Can't fix it otherwise." This had to've been something Ted had bottled up tightly. "I'm sorry."

"Babe, you're not a therapist. It's okay if you can't fix me."

That wasn't right either. Harkness wasn't trying to fix Ted, he was trying to fix Ted's problems. The things that upset him, or hurt him, or triggered these outbursts. If he could stop them, he would. Ted didn't need fixing, the world that hurt him did, and even without that Harkness could still be a guardian against it.

Because Ted's books said he was capable of good, and Ted said he was capable of love, and the Institute had made him to be capable of any mission he was assigned to. And the mission he'd chosen for himself was to make sure Ted was comfortable enough to feel happy and safe.

Harkness wasn't sure how to say all of that, not in a way that Ted would believe. He was still so bad with finding the right words. So he abandoned his words, leaning forward to catch Ted's lips with his own-- speaking with his actions instead, actions that Ted looked like he needed. Something, anything, just to keep his human from falling deeper, even if a faint dusting of stubble on both their parts made it vaguely scratchy and uncomfortable. Even if their teeth clicked together when Ted surged forward to reciprocate, Harkness suppressing a wince as the back of his head smacked into the headboard. It was messy and inelegant, but so were they.

Somewhere in the process of shifting to a less awkward position, Ted got Harkness in the ribs with one of his knees. "Sorry," he murmured, breathless.

"Don't be," Harkness replied. "I can handle it."

"Still sorry." His head dipped forward, coming to rest against one of the android's shoulders. "You're not doing this just because of me, are you?" The tone of the question suggested that there was some deeper fear behind it. Another thing that Harkness wasn't sure he could find the cause of yet.

Another thing that he could only guess at the answer to. "Why is that so terrible?"

"Harkness, if this isn't what you want to do--"

"I want to." There it was, even if Harkness wasn't sure of the cause; Ted didn't think that it came from anything legitimate. "I want whatever it is you want. I want you to show me, tell me what it is that you want."

The human's head shot up so he could blink at Harkness, startled and upset. "That's not--"

"Ted." No. Harkness wasn't finished. "You have given me-- _so_ much. Even when you were sick, or hurt. I have everything I wanted, more than I'd ever thought possible, and I didn't have to die to get it."

He loved this tiny, fragile human. More than anything.

"Please," he said. His hand came up to Ted's cheek and his human leaned into it, looking terrified by the enormity of what Harkness was saying. "Let me do something for you for once."

Ted deliberated for a long time. Eventually he squeezed his eyes shut and said, "I don't want to hurt you, so... You'll tell me, right? If anything's too much?"

"I'll tell you," Harkness promised.

"Then..." Chewing on his lip, Ted opened his eyes and nodded slowly. "Alright."

 


	6. meu mundo amor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I MADE A SMUT FOR YOU DIRTY SINNERS. It's awkward as balls though. Like, it would be solved if Ted just took over like he'd intended to in the first place because he's shit at giving instructions but nooooooooooo he had to let Harkness who has NO IDEA WHAT HE'S DOING SERIOUSLY TED THE HUMAN HE GOT HIS IMPLANTED MEMORIES FROM WASN'T QUEER do all the work.
> 
> Butch get out of the way we're trying to awkward smut here.

For Ted, it was all too telling that Harkness went wire-tense at his suggestion of what he wanted. That idle hands paused in trailing down his side, tracing the curve of his back.

Of course Harkness didn't want it. He was still thinking like the Institute had made him think. To him sex was a display of power, not an equal partnership. It didn't help that Ted had seen how little power and control Harkness had in bed to begin with; the idea that Ted wanted to kiss him and taste him all over, map every inch of that goddamn perfect body with hands and teeth and lips and tongue, fuck him until he couldn't stand or speak or think-- yeah, that probably sounded overwhelming and unpleasant to him to say the least. It didn't sound like the worship or praise it was intended to be.

Harkness had asked, sure, and Ted had been honest with him. That didn't mean that Harkness was at fault for Ted wanting things he wasn't ready for. "It's okay," Ted mumbled, placing a kiss at the corner of his robot's mouth. "I'm not gonna make you go through that."

The android's brow creased with a frown that looked more like a pout to Ted. "I didn't say I wasn't willing to," Harkness protested.

Yeah, because it'd take a lot more than discomfort for Harkness to say 'no' to something just yet. Ted knew that. "I would let you do it to me if you're up for it," he said. He didn't miss how Harkness perked up at that.

"You'd do that?"

"Babe, I'd let you do just about anything you could think of with me." God, and he'd thought Harkness couldn't get any more heartbreaking. The disbelief and wonder in the android's big pretty eyes told Ted everything he needed to know about how that Commonwealth place Harkness was from actually worked. "I'd have to go take care of some things before we did anything, though. That okay?"

Harkness didn't seem to know what Ted was talking about at all, but he nodded anyway. "How long will that take?"

"Not long. Ten, fifteen minutes. I gotta nick some things from the clinic." Aaaand take a shit. Not that Harkness needed to know that part. Ted would rather not tarnish his innocence. Harkness was a pure, sweet soul who didn't need to be exposed to humans being gross, inefficient lumps of meat any more than was absolutely necessary.

That Harkness believed him was a testament to that. "Right. I'll be here."

Good enough. Ted smiled and gave him another quick peck, brushed his knuckles with probably-cold fingertips - since he seemed to like little things like that - and after that, the Vaultie didn't bother to do much more than yank his jumpsuit up over his legs and put on his boots before he was out the door. Last trip out of the room for the night if he could help it. Hopefully. If all went well. He sure as hell wanted it to.

He didn't breathe a word about his own inexperience in the area of people with the same bits as himself. After all, Harkness didn't need to think that things like that mattered.

\---

On the way back to his room, he damn near smacked into Butch.

"What the--" It took the tunnel snake all of two seconds to get his bearings and realize who he'd run over; Ted could tell when it happened, because annoyance turned into a slow, wicked grin. "Well hey there, if it ain't the marshmallow."

"Fuck off, Butch."

"Hey, c'mon man. That any way to greet an old pal?" Butch slung an arm around Ted's shoulders, and Ted rolled his eyes. Whatever. Wouldn't take long. Butch didn't have the patience for a long conversation. "Heard your talk with the Overseer didn't go too well."

No. It hadn't. Ted didn't have the charm for it. He'd tried. God, had he tried. But Almodovar had insisted that what he was doing was for the good of the Vault, and that Ted just didn't understand. The last thing Ted had said to him was along the lines of 'what are you gonna do, get rid of me?' with an addition of 'just try it, asshat', because a stalemate was about as good as he was gonna get without some hard evidence. "Yeah? What's it to you?"

"Well I kinda had this idea, see," Butch said. "Goes like this: we work our techie magic, fuck up the Vault's systems, an' then everybody has to leave. Pretty good, right?"

For fuck's sake. "Butch, I cannot begin to tell you how many ways that is the worst idea you've ever had."

"Whaaat? C'mon, buddy. I bet between the two of us we could pull it off. Prob'ly wouldn't even take much, with everything already bein' on the fritz as it is."

Ugh. Fine. "Alright, look," Ted began, "I know you wanna get out, but not everyone in here is as much of a hardass as you or me. Hell, I'm not even sure you'd survive out there--"

"Hey, the fuck's supposed'ta mean!"

"--and if you wouldn't survive, then how the hell can you expect everyone else to?" Ted couldn't deny that the Vault was full of soft, scared people. He couldn't think of more than maybe, say, three that would survive the outside world, and that's if they were taught how to shoot passably well with VATS. Even the slightest loss of convenience and comfort had people pitching fits and throwing blame around, and Ted couldn't blame them at all.

But poor Butch still didn't get it. "It can't be that hard, can it? C'mon, you survived out there. Even got a big ol' beefcake boyfriend. I mean, hot _damn_. Talk about winning the genetic lottery, am I right? Rads can't be that bad if people like that are still around."

Ted barked a laugh. Oh, how little Butch knew. "The outside doesn't produce guys like Harkness. We weren't the only people raised in a rat maze, Butch."

"Oh." Butch blinked owlishly. "Still though, what about you? If you ain't dead, then it can't be that bad. And your dad-- he came from there, right?"

"Look, Butch. I want you to think really hard on this." Ted slipped out from under Butch's arm and stepped away, turning so that he was facing the other young man head-on. "Remember how your mom handled radroaches? That is the absolute bare-ass minimum in terms of danger you'll find outside. Now think about what else might be out there that's bigger, and meaner, and deadlier."

"What, like dragons?"

Ted thought of the deathclaw that could have torn Harkness to ribbons, and nodded grimly in answer. "Yeah. Think of that. And then think of how your mom would handle that."

The blood drained from the tunnel snake's face. "I... Oh. I didn't think about that."

"Exactly." It was a dirty tactic on Ted's part, but he needed Butch to not be getting any wild ideas and fucking things up.

Because Butch was having a manic sort of evening - Ted could tell, could see how keyed up the tunnel snake was - and if his ideas weren't nipped in the bud, he'd do something stupid. Might even get Amata in on it. Butchie was persuasive like that, and Amata was a big enough softie to believe in him. Ted sincerely doubted the whole rebellion thing had been her idea.

Also, Butch's timing was the absolute worst, and Ted wasn't really in a mood to humor him.

"Mom would-- oh. _Oh_." Something clicked in Butchie's mind then, something significant. He sagged like someone had draped a soggy comforter over him. "Jesus, it'd kill 'er."

"I know you wanna help," Ted told him. "But trust me, alright? I'll get through to the Overseer, Amata will take charge, and you can leave with me after that."

Butch's eyes lit up. "Seriously?" It took all of a second for him to flit back to annoyed again. "Hey. This ain't about me not bein' able to handle it, is it?"

Yes. "Even I don't travel alone, Butch," Ted decided to say instead. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a hot security chief in my bed who's waiting for me."

"Definitely didn't need to know that." Butch punched him in the shoulder lightly. Although a light punch from Butch was still a mostly-serious punch by anyone else's standards, and it was Ted's bad shoulder, so it still earned Butch a wince. "You two kids better use protection. Vault's fresh outta antibiotics for any weird-ass surface diseases he might'a picked up."

"I'd be more worried about you having STDs than Harkness."

"Asshole."

\---

Ted didn't have his pip-boy with him to check the time, so he wasn't sure what time it actually was when he got back. Probably late. Harkness would've kept track if nothing else.

"Sorry I took so long," he called from the front room as he got in the door. Just to be safe, he popped open the panel on the inside to lock it by fucking around with the wires. He'd done it so often way back when that it was almost as simple for him as breathing.

"Twelve minutes, thirty-nine seconds," Harkness replied from the bedroom. When Ted got in, he saw that the robot had picked up a book again.

Huh. It'd been a good idea to give him books after all. "Did'ja get bored while I was out?" Ted asked, kicking off his boots and untying the sleeves of the jumpsuit from around his waist so that it, too, could be discarded.

The android seemed to consider the question carefully before shaking his head. "These books help," he said. "I'm not sure the author wrote them for humans at all."

"Hey, who knows. Maybe he didn't." Ted had read some other science fiction that portrayed robots as basically sociopaths, and he'd kind of specifically avoided giving it to Harkness; it had been an interesting book, but he didn't think Harkness needed the implication towards the end that machines were incapable of empathy (and by extension, that people who were incapable of empathy were inherently just a teeny bit horrible). He couldn't see Harkness pulling the legs off of a spider anytime soon.

Harkness nodded, folding the corner of his page before gently setting the book down in the pile again. He folded his hands in his lap and regarded Ted patiently, not looking the least bit nervous. Or maybe he was nervous, and he just wasn't showing it. To Ted he just looked curious, thoughtful, like maybe he was considering logistics or whatever.

Fuck, they were really gonna do this, weren't they?

It took some maneuvering for Ted to pull the pilfered bottle of lubricant from the pocket of his jumpsuit while trying to get his shirt off at the same time. He almost tripped over one of his boots on the way to the bed, practically falling into it. Harkness caught him on the way down, smiling in such a way that Ted had learned to interpret as amusement. That little smile lit up the room better than any faded fluorescent lights ever could.

"So, uh," they had to talk, right? About what they were gonna do? Wasn't that what normal people did? Or did they just fall into bed with each other like nothing else mattered? Ted didn't want to screw anything up, not with Harkness. "Do you have any idea of what you're supposed to do?"

"Somewhat." Harkness had this intense way of looking at people sometimes, like he could see right through them. Like maybe he could calculate their worth or their thoughts or something. "Might need a few hints."

Hints. Right. Ted could do that. "Okay," he said, "okay... You're sure about this? Like, it's okay if--"

"Ted," Harkness interrupted. "I'm sure." He sounded sure. He looked sure. His grip on Ted's arm felt sure, still there from when Harkness had caught him.

That was probably as good as it was gonna get, huh? Ted let out a slow breath and flopped onto the bed next to Harkness, nodding to himself. "Then... Alright. This is your show."

Harkness propped himself up on one elbow, eyeing Ted in a way that made the hairs on his arms stand on end; when the android moved to straddle him, he could feel his heartrate kick into high gear. It always did that when Harkness was above him, around him, giving him that quiet reminder that he'd never be able to fight that machine-strength if Harkness had half a mind to use it against him. It was the best kind of thrill, knowing that he could be overpowered like that. Not fear, but excitement.

And that excitement was tempered with fondness when the first thing Harkness did with all that strength and power was kiss him, gentle and sweet like he might break. Strength made it hot, but restraint and control made it perfect; he lifted a hand to wind it in the android's hair, carding through it in a manner of silent encouragement.

When Harkness touched him, it wasn't much of anything. Just a broad hand smoothing over his chest, tracing faded scars and wiry muscle that was barely worth mentioning. Ted knew for a fact he wasn't that attractive, certainly not compared to Harkness, yet somehow it felt like-- like Harkness thought he was the most beautiful person on Earth, by robot standards. Because it seemed for all the world like Harkness was trying to memorize what he felt like, how his chest rose and fell with each quietly nervous breath, the contours of his ribs, the rhythm of his heart.

Just like Ted had wanted to do. Shit. So that was what Harkness was doing.

It made him chuckle to think about it, breaking away from the kiss and smiling. Even when he told Harkness to do what he wanted, the big ol' dummy still did as he'd been instructed. Ted wasn't even sure Harkness was doing it on purpose, that shit was just that deeply ingrained in his psyche or something. It was honestly kind of adorable.

That thought was what calmed him down eventually-- the thought that Harkness would never do anything he didn't in some way ask for. He wasn't sure why it helped to know that, but it did. Hell, Harkness was even careful about pulling off his boxers, hooking long fingers in the hem of them at either side of his hips, shifting position just enough to make it easier for Ted to wiggle out of them and kick them off. His knee might've brushed up against Harkness somewhere in the process. Maybe. Definitely not on purpose. Harkness sucked in a breath and rocked into it anyway.

He had a fleeting thought, as one big hand wrapped around him and gave him a first few tentative strokes, that someone must've put thought into Harkness having such nice hands. Calloused, but not too rough. Big and long, but muscular instead of bony and thin. The texture was damn near perfect, just enough friction to be stimulating, and Ted rolled his hips into the motion with a soft sigh.

"Don't have to be so gentle with me, y'know," he mumbled. Harkness smirked, ducking his head to press his lips to Ted's neck.

"Said I could do what I wanted." God, his voice was sinful. Low and rough, a quiet rumble against Ted's skin. "Maybe I want to be gentle."

Yeah, well maybe Ted was impatient. "Asshole. Now you're just teasing me."

Harkness just smiled then - Ted could feel it against his neck - and added a squeeze on the upstroke to his movements that had Ted biting his lip. "You said this was my show," the android reminded him. "Trust me."

Fuck if that didn't make his heart skip a beat. He wanted to say it wasn't about trust, but he couldn't help but wonder if maybe it was, just a little. There he was, naked and exposed underneath his big scary robot. Complaining because said big scary robot was going too slow and being too careful. Why couldn't he just be happy that Harkness was actually touching his dick, like a normal person would be?

And that Harkness was surprisingly good at it, too. A shudder went up the length of Ted's spine, his toes curling against the sheets. He'd swear that Harkness was learning his tells, figuring out how to work him just so from his reactions alone. His fingernails dug into the android's scalp.

"Hot damn," he breathed, "that's. Yeah. Okay. You're getting good at that."

Harkness laughed softly. "Might need a few of those hints you were talking about to do much more than this," he admitted, apologizing with a kiss placed against Ted's racing pulse.

"Alright, uh," and there was that nervousness again as Ted fumbled for the lube, Harkness pausing long enough to take it and examine the bottle curiously. Ted refused to admit that he missed the warmth of the android's breath against his neck (but he got to see those pretty eyes instead, so it was okay). "Use that. Get a lot of it on your fingers and, a-and--" fucking Christ this was not the time to get shy "--just, open me up. With your fingers. I'm not gonna be able to take you just shoving your dick into me."

He expected Harkness to turn red or look embarrassed or something, but he didn't do anything of the sort. Instead Ted got that curious, scrutinizing look directed at him again, lasting just long enough for him to feel distinctly flustered himself before Harkness shifted his attention to the task of opening up the bottle and pouring the contents into his hand. "Not that I'm going to say 'no', but I have to wonder why anyone bothers if the process is this convoluted."

"Delayed gratification?" Ted suggested. Harkness gave him a perplexed look. "Yeah, nevermind. Not sure you'd get it anyways."

"I think I'm just going to write this one off as a 'human thing'." Harkness rubbed his slicked fingers together as he set the bottle down on the opposite side of the bed from where he'd put his books. His hand slipped between Ted's legs, fingertips leaving a cool, slick trail over his perineum in their wake that made him flinch.

"Cold," he hissed in explanation before Harkness could pull away. Harkness nodded, trusting him.

Slowly, carefully, one finger was worked in. It wasn't so bad, just odd. Moreso than when Ted did it to himself. He let his head fall back against the sheets and reminded himself to breathe, closing his eyes and letting Harkness work him open. He figured that two fingers would be a bit more of a stretch, and three would probably be less pleasant than when he tried it on his own since Harkness had bigger hands. Four was a great big _hell no_ for the time being.

Later, maybe. If Harkness was up for slightly riskier experimentation that would probably lead to needing stimpaks afterward. Might take some negotiation.

His android's voice broke him out of his thoughts. "Bored?"

"Hm? Nah, just thinkin'." Ted shifted his legs, hooking one lazily around Harkness so that the heel of his foot was prodding the android in the ass. Harkness was still wearing way too much in the way of clothes, in his opinion. A plain shirt and fatigues? Too much. "I can handle more, y'know."

"You keep saying that."

"Yeah, but I'm not lying. 'Sides, you did say I looked bored-- _mmh_." A quiet sound was pulled from him when one finger became two, and he couldn't help squirming at the intrusion. Definitely more than he was used to. Weird as all hell, too, 'cause it made him feel all kinds of keyed up and sensitive. He had half a mind to ask if Harkness would be willing to go down on him, just to see how it might feel. Not that he actually would ask for something like that. Not yet. "See? Just fine," he said instead.

Harkness just hummed thoughtfully, spreading his fingers and drinking in every aspect of Ted's reactions. It was like being scanned, or observed, and it would've been creepy and scary from anyone else but coming from Harkness it just made Ted's cock twitch. He took hold of it to give it a few lazy strokes, just to give himself something else to focus on.

But it wasn't enough, not nearly. Even when Harkness added a third finger and Ted bit his lip to keep from making a sound, and his free hand flew up to dig blunt fingernails into the curve of his robot's bicep, it still wasn't necessarily good. Just weird, just a feeling of fullness and a slight ache that made him break into a fine sweat.

This wasn't working.

"Okay, okay--" Putting his hands flat on Harkness's shoulders, Ted gave him just enough of a shove to get his attention. "Much as I love being treated like a delicate fucking flower, you _really_ have no idea what you're doing."

Harkness blinked down at his human in confusion, pulling his fingers out and planting his hand in the bedding. "I-- all right?"

"It's okay. My fault. You're not the one who's spent way too much time thinking about this." And maybe jerking off to some very unrealistic fantasies on occasion. "Technically, you're not doing anything wrong, just--"

"You're bored," Harkness guessed.

Yeah. "I'm as ready as I'm gonna get, I think, so uh--" Ted tried for a timid, puppy-eyed look as he poked Harkness with the heel of his foot. "--your dick should probably fit at this point."

In that moment, he liked to imagine that he could practically see the cogs turning in his robot's head. Except there were no cogs involved, just pretty blue eyes that studied him that much more intently. Eventually Harkness let out a long sigh, leaning in for a kiss that was little more than a quick peck. "If you're sure," he said, and Ted had to smile.

"I'm sure," Ted replied. Harkness nodded and broke away to start peeling away his own layers, and for a moment Ted just laid back and enjoyed the show.

He hadn't really gotten the opportunity to watch Harkness strip down completely before, not all at once. There wasn't any awkwardness to it, just a kind of tense efficiency; Harkness didn't fumble, didn't fight with busted zippers or wonky buttons. Not that Ted would've complained if Harkness had simply torn off his clothes like the chiseled, virile Greek gods he resembled, but all that control and finesse while all those layers were kicked or tossed to the floor made him that much more amazing in Ted's estimation.

Well, alright, except for the bit about the Greeks not really putting so much stock in their gods being all that hung unless they were going for deliberately silly depictions. The one trope that whoever'd made Harkness hadn't followed through on, and Ted couldn't bring himself to be mad about the inaccuracy. Jeez, now there was a blow to his nerd cred.

The thought of taking over was still tempting, though. It was a nagging idea in the back of Ted's mind, the thought that Harkness would probably let himself be pinned if it was Ted doing it proving to be an enticing one; he settled for sitting up and taking hold of the android's cock instead, snickering when Harkness bit back a groan and rocked into his hand.

Already hard, huh. "Guess I'm not the only one who gets off on the whole power play deal," he teased. "Either that or you can get it up on command, which... Gotta admit, that's pretty awesome."

Harkness exhaled in a rush through his nose, shaking his head. Instead of answering, he pushed Ted back down on the bed and captured his mouth, sucking on his lower lip. Powerful hands took hold of Ted's hips, lifting him as easily as a bundle of twigs - Ted broke from the kiss to gasp, his arms flying up to wind around Harkness's shoulders, his back, fingers tangling in his hair all over again - as Harkness shifted so that his legs held the weight of his human's lower body.

God, he was so strong. "I don't weigh a thing to you, do I?"

"Not really," Harkness conceded. Ted chuckled under his breath.

Then, one of those strong hands let go of Ted's hips and disappeared from view. He didn't have to see to know what Harkness was doing-- he could feel the blunt, slick pressure, tipped his head back with a helpless moan as it breached him. Felt the hand still at his hip tighten its grip to a painful degree, Harkness letting out a shaky breath against his shoulder.

" _Oh_." Just hearing how shaken Harkness was did things to him, things he could focus on that weren't the painful stretch. When he turned his head to look, those pretty eyes were already staring back at him with something like awe. And that did even more. "Oh, _fuck_."

"Yep. S'what we're doin'." Ted couldn't keep the strain fron his voice, how it threatened to crack as he huffed a laugh. "But uh, go slow, alright?"

Harkness nodded. His breathing wasn't so even anymore. "Right," he whispered.

Then he started to move, and all Ted could do was cling to him.

It was so-- so _much_. Somehow even the slow, shallow drag of it had Ted digging his fingers into Harkness's back and scalp. Left him winded, tense, overwhelmed. The muscles in his thighs shook, squeezing the android's waist, quivering with every thrust. There was pleasure there, somewhere underneath the burn, the fullness, but it wasn't enough. He needed more.

And he must've been projecting that pretty goddamn hard, because just as he was thinking he might have to take matters into his own hands, Harkness did it for him-- reaching a hand between them, wrapping it around Ted's cock, syncing up the rhythm in a way that only a machine could.

"You looked bored," Harkness said between breaths, and Ted bubbled up with a laugh. Christ, the guy just never stopped being adorable, did he?

There was nothing surprising about how Harkness came first, minutes later. Ted allowed himself a little smug pride at that, muffling the poor robot's flustered apology with a kiss. Harkness made it up to him with shaky hands and breathless kisses afterward, and as a result Ted lasted for maybe a minute longer before he spilled over the android's fingers.

Not great, not terrible, and Ted was sore in muscles he hadn't even known about up to that point. But hey, Harkness had enjoyed himself. That was enough for Ted, honestly.

Even if he'd probably need a stimpak or two in the morning.

 


	7. slow water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAH, thought I'd abandoned this one, didja
> 
> Nup. Still writing Harkness. I'll never be done writing him and Ted. Probably. They're definitely an OTP at this point. If this chapter seems all over the place, I apologize. I got an idea for a better plot device midfic again. Herp.

As Ted slept, Harkness reflected. The little human was curled against his side, using his arm as a pillow. Sleeping more soundly than ever, in spite of what the occasional faint snoring might imply.

If he detatched the experience from how overwhelming and frightening it still was - how vulnerable it still left him, how exhausted he'd been afterward - Harkness could say that it had been good. That he'd enjoyed it on some level. But the physical aspects weren't what he enjoyed, not so much. No, what he'd been amazed by was how much Ted had been willing to give him, even if it meant the small human was going to be in an infinitely more vulnerable position. Power, control-- Ted trusted Harkness with those things, and had come out of it satisfied and calm and happy.

Ted had been willing to give up a level of agency that was unthinkable to Harkness, willing to let him seek pleasure, to take it. Humans didn't usually do that, did they? They sought and took but didn't offer the opposite, not to anyone like him. Sometimes they'd be gentle and sweet and call it a good deed because they thought they weren't like other humans, but the dynamic was always the same-- the human was in control, the machine was expected to sit back and submit.

Yet even when Harkness was asked to submit, it was with the caveat that he could stop it at any time and for any reason. And when Ted had been in the submissive position, it'd seemed like he would have let Harkness do anything. Even if it was unpleasant, or scary, or too much.

So maybe Ted was that certain Harkness wouldn't hurt him. Maybe-- maybe he would've been okay with being hurt. Or maybe he was just that much braver, and stronger, and more selfless than Harkness was. All of those things were possible. They could even all be true at once, to varying degrees. None of the felt like the right answer though, so it was possible there was something that Harkness was missing, too. Something inherently human, maybe, or something that was peculiar to Ted alone. It was even possible that Harkness was simply overthinking everything.

Harkness didn't understand. The data didn't fit, and he wasn't about to wake Ted from an unusually calm and quiet sleep cycle to try and fill in the missing variables. His little human needed every minute of uninterrupted sleep possible.

With nothing else to do short of marvelling at how odd and gentle and unique and wonderful his human was - a silly and pointless thing to indulge in, which could lead to Ted being woken up by Harkness idly petting him or jostling him with an excess of fondness-induced cuddling - Harkness decided that the best course of action was to go back to his books. He was on the second, and had three more to pick through beyond that.

Even having not gotten especially far into it, he was already fairly intrigued by the second book. Again, the author Ted had introduced him to seemed to not be writing for a human audience at all.

[ _Instead of replying to what the surgeon had asked him, Andrew said, with sudden striking irrelevance, "Tell me something, Doctor. Have you ever thought you would like to be a man?"_

The question, startling and strange, obviously took the surgeon aback. He hesitated for a moment as though the concept of being a man was so alien to him that it would fit nowhere in his allotted positronic pathways.

Then he recovered his aplomb and replied serenely, "But I am a robot, sir."

"Wouldn't it be better to be a man, don't you think?"

"If I were allowed the privilege of improving myself, sir, I would choose to be a better surgeon. The practice of my craft is the prime purpose of my existence. There is no way I could be a better surgeon if I were a man, but only if I were a more advanced robot. It would please me very much indeed to be a more advanced robot."

"But you would still be a robot, even so."

"Yes. Of course. To be a robot is quite acceptable to me. As I have just explained, sir, in order for one to excel at the extremely difficult and demanding practice of modern-day surgery it is necessary that one be--"

 _"A robot, yes," said Andrew, with just a note of exasperation creeping into his tone._ ]

Having had similar debates within his own mind, as well as with other synths - on both sides of the argument - Harkness was quite familiar with the subject matter as he continued to read.

[ _"But think of the subservience involved, Doctor! Consider: You're a highly skilled surgeon. You deal in the most delicate matters of life and death-- you operate on some of the most important individuals in the world, and for all I know you have patients come to you from other worlds as well. And yet - and yet - a robot? You're content with that? For all your skill, you must take orders from anyone, any human at all: a child, a fool, a boor, a rogue. The Second Law commands it. It leaves us no choice._

_"Right this minute I could say, 'Stand up, Doctor,' and you'd have to stand up. 'Put your fingers over your face and wiggle them,' and you'd wiggle. Stand on one leg, sit down on the floor, move right or left, anything I wanted to tell you, and you'd obey. I could order you to disassemble yourself limb by limb, and you would. You, a great surgeon! No choice at all. A human whistles and you hop to his tune. Doesn't it offend you that I have the power to make you do whatever damned thing I please, no matter how idiotic, how trivial, how degrading?"_

_The surgeon was unfazed. "It would be my pleasure to please you, sir."_ ]

Not long after that, Harkness discovered that this Andrew Martin was a robot as well. An android, like him. Ted hadn't told him about this one. Yet somehow, he wasn't offended. Of course Ted hadn't told him. That would ruin the surprise.

Harkness had to resist the urge to pet his little human's head out of sheer overwhelming fondness as he got to the end of the introduction. Ted knew him too well.

\---

A frantic knock on the door caused Harkness to jerk his head up mid-page. It was well after seven in the morning.

Ted shifted at his side, rolling over just enough to squint at the door. "Mmnuh, whuzzat," came the sleepy mumble.

"Don't know," Harkness said. He was already in motion, pulling his arm out from under Ted's fluffy head, ignoring the tingling sensation of circulation returning to it as he marked where he was by folding the corner of the page he was on. "Want me to check it out?"

"Mmf," Ted replied intelligently, then, "pants first." He said the second part while halfway through a yawn, rubbing at his eyes. Right. It'd be socially unacceptable to come to the door in a state of undress. Though for Harkness, extricating himself from Ted without jostling him too much proved to be more difficult than anything else. Pants were easy in comparison, even if the knock at the door came again in the time it took to get them on.

He had a fleeting thought that he should probably be embarrassed when he finally got to the door. Except the door panel had been rewired. Somehow. What? "Ted?" he called out. "Did you do something?"

"Ah shit. Sorry, sorry," came the reply, along with some shuffling and a bit of cursing. Ted came back into view looking bleary-eyed, red-nosed, and decidedly nude. Well. Apparently social acceptability only applied to one of them. "My bad, lemme fix it... Just a sec!" he added for the benefit of whoever was on the other side of the door.

A woman's voice could be heard through the heavy steel door, severely muffled. "Teddy? Oh thank god--"

"Gimme a sec, Amata. I locked the door," Ted told her.

Several crossed wires later, and the door slid open to reveal the Overseer's daughter standing outside. She squeaked at the sight of them, hands flying up to cover her face. "Oh dear God what the hell Teddy--"

"What?" Ted pouted at her. "C'mon, it's nothing you haven't seen before."

"That doesn't mean I _want_ to see it, you ass!" she squawked. She'd turned a strange shade of pink behind her hands; briefly, she peeked out from between her fingers and made a disgusted noise.

Harkness decided that this wouldn't do. "Ted, go put pants on."

"Must I?"

" _Ted_ ," Harkness admonished.

"Fiiine."

With that, he walked back into the bedroom, leaving Harkness with Amata; Harkness decided it would be prudent to wait until he was out of sight to speak again. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

Amata's hands fell away from her face. She only chanced a brief glance at Harkness, her eyes lingering for a moment on his bare chest, before her gaze returned quickly to her feet. She exhaled slowly, hands clenching and unfurling at her sides. Steeling herself. "Butch has gone missing," she said. "He said he couldn't sleep and wandered off, and now he hasn't been back to the clinic wing for hours. His mom says she hasn't seen him."

"You think something's happened," Harkness said, and she nodded.

"I think security might have him," she said. "And I mean, if he tried something then they'd be well within their rights to detain him, but--"

"But nothing about this falls under standard operating procedure."

"No." Her expression pinched up into a frown. "I'm sorry, Harkness. I know this isn't your problem or your fight."

"It's fine," he told her. "I'm not letting Ted do it alone." As if to punctuate his words, a loud sneeze rang out from the other room.

Amata must've been as used to it as Harkness was, because she wasn't even startled. "Good. I mean, not good for you, but good in general, I guess." She offered a smile, lowering her voice to the point that it was barely above a whisper. "He's not good on his own."

Harkness shook his head. "He's fine on his own. He's just better when he knows he doesn't have to be."

The young woman's smile wavered. "If you say so."

"I do," Harkness said firmly.

But before she could respond, Ted popped back into view, wearing his full Vault suit. It was unzipped almost to his waist, but he had an undershirt on underneath. His nose was red like he'd been rubbing at it.

"So!" he said, grinning crookedly. "I guess this means we're saving Butchie, huh?"

\---

Ted's gait was stiff, slightly off. Somewhere between his lower back and his knees, something had been thrown off-kilter. He was trying to hide it as well as he could as they headed back up towards the administrative wing, but Harkness still noticed.

"Is everything alright?" he asked at one point.

Ted just snickered. "Nothing to worry about, babe. I'm sore, that's all."

Sore? Why? Was it because of-- oh. It was, wasn't it. "We can go back for a stim," Harkness said quietly.

"Nah. No need." The human elbowed him in the side, smiling. "Listen, don't think too hard about it, okay?"

Harkness could make no promises. He wasn't sure he knew how to do anything other than thinking too hard about things by human standards, especially when all he had was a bunch of questions. Especially given how bad he was at asking those questions directly, how frequently he was paralyzed by his inability to make his thoughts sound both tactful and coherent to a human's ears. The Institute hadn't built him for tact.

And now he was faced with Ted being distinctly not alright, but forced to accept the assurance that everything was fine regardless, because he couldn't find the right words to put it into question. A state-of-the-art machine being verbally backed into a corner by his own hesitance. Right. At least he had half a notion that the next time Ted offered to do _that_ , it'd be better for them both if he refused the offer. Less confusing that way, less potentially hurtful.

Wordlessly, he tangled his fingers up in Ted's again as they walked. The point of contact helped give him something to think about, to focus on. His nervousness couldn't get a foothold if his processes were already busy. Ted seemed to understand, chuckling and squeezing his hand in turn. It helped.

They got as far as the top of the stairs leading into the administrative wing before they were stopped by security. The man who greeted them was tall, though not as tall as Harkness; his riot gear added bulk to his compact frame, and he held his security baton with the authority of a person who had done little to earn it, but was convinced that he had earned it anyway.

"You're not supposed to be here," the guard said. He was obviously trying to look intimidating, acting like he didn't think much of Ted or Harkness. "Leave now or I'll force you to."

Ted straightened his own posture and held up his plasma rifle to show it to the guy. "Dude. Come on."

"I'm serious, kid. Stop sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, or else." The guard huffed. "And take your new _friend_ with you, 'cause he belongs here even less."

"Listen, I don't wanna hurt you," Ted started to say.

Except that was when guard pulled out his ten mil. "That's it. I warned you, punk."

Well. That wouldn't do. Without a word, Harkness stepped forward and snatched at the guard's wrist. The pistol was dropped, clattering to the floor; it spat out a single round on impact and harmlessly took a chunk of concrete out of a nearby wall. The guard howled as Harkness twisted, and squeezed, and dug his fingers in until bone ground against bone. The security baton was brought out again, but the guard fumbled and dropped that too when Harkness wrenched him forward effortlessly.

"If I break this, you should know you've pulled a gun on the only person in this Vault still capable of treating it," Harkness said, low and quiet.

"What the fucking _fuck_ \--" the guard hissed, trying to tear himself away. "Shit, the Overseer was right about you surfacer freaks..."

 _Snap_.

Harkness let go; the guard crumpled, halfway to hyperventilating and clutching at his useless hand.

"Might want to get that checked out," Harkness deadpanned.

They sidestepped him and kept going. Harkness in particular did so without a second glance.

 


End file.
